I often giggle when I think of what comes out of my studio in contrast to the work of gifted, well-schooled artists! Highly skilled artists may be among the most generously-encouraging-to-beginners group of professionals on earth. We all are included in a vastly diverse culture where there is a place for most anyone at any level and inclination.

But I have a library of art books—both “how to” tutorials by well-known artists, and tomes of art history and criticism. I love to study these books, and I do know the difference between classic art and smoke and mirrors—my off-the-cuff “hashtag” for a bag of tricks which I am delighted to share with any beginner who is eager to paint and willing to spend hours each week, building an inventory of paintings in his or her studio.

My 12″ x 16″ rendering below is titled “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”, and it is composed of tricks that my seven-year-old great-grandsons could perform if they decided to sit or stand still long enough, I began by slathering gesso on the 140# cold press paper to create rocky slopes. After the gesso dried, I sprayed the surface with water and applied different watercolors—jiggling the paper so the paints could blend and do their own thing, When those paints dried, I streaked a thinned application of white gouache here and there to add mystery and a sense of age to the rocks. Voilà. Smoke and mirrors.

The next example displays a couple of favorite tricks: plastic wrap and salt. (I use Kosher salt, but any will do—creating slightly varying effects). The paper used here is Yupo, that glass-like surface which is not really paper, but rather an amalgamation of chemicals. (There is no middle ground with Yupo. Artists either love it or hate it. The lovers are the “let it all hang out” group of which I am one, and the haters are the perfectionists who do well with lots of control.)

Where you see crinkles and wrinkles, that is where the plastic wrap was applied. It takes a long time for the paint to dry under plastic wrap on Yupo, and less time on a rag surface which is absorbent. The spots and phased-out parts were done with salt. The salt technique is far more spectacular on rag paper than on Yupo. The painting at the top of this page shows the result of salting the wet paint on rag paper. Salt can make snowflakes, clouds, stars, dandelion fluff, and many additional effects,

Thus you can see that whenever art making is a person’s dream, it can be done. And every dream will materialize differently—as each of us is unique. What fun we can have, sharing our ways to implement the smoke and mirrors! 🙂

I came up with another excuse for putting off blogging: my mouse died. After countless years with my pet mouse, he (it) bit the dust. I simply cannot get the hang of keyboarding with my pinkie. But now I have a brand new purple mouse from Office Max, and I’m eager to blog. I LOVE the color purple!

Obviously, the long skinny panel above wouldn’t fit into my phone camera without showing the surround of our front door and a rug. But you get the idea that by February in Wisconsin those of us who do not care to ski, skate, or roll in snow are dreaming—even pining—for spring. Nowhere does this longing express itself more blatantly than in our home. Flowers are blooming all over the place!

This gallery wrap canvas experienced many mutations. The pink at the top began as foxgloves, those deadly but lovely bell-shaped flowers that always remind me of Beatrix Potter’s foolish duck who laid her eggs under the “protection” of the Foxy Gentleman who lounged among the foxgloves.

My foxgloves were rather ugly, so I tried to morph them into tulips. The tulips were equally unpleasant, so I dabbed away—adding gouache—until the tulips became those fragrant blossoms that most anyone can render convincingly: lilacs.

Yes, May!!! Next down the line were purple irides (otherwise known as irises), something I can normally manage to paint because of their ruffles. Then more lilacs or maybe pink irides, and finally my beloved mertensia—Virginia bluebells.

A lot of gouache was layered onto this watercolor flower arrangement, giving the panel a nice textured effect. I painted the sides with acrylic, because when I spray the finished panel with an acrylic fixative for preservation it is easy to cover the flat surface—but the sides are harder to spray. I want to make sure my gallery wrap panels will last, at least for a few decades and perhaps longer.

In a little over two weeks, daylight saving begins. Hurray! And it’s already spring within the walls of our home! 🙂

Six months since my last entry. I always taught our 6 children that they should never feel pressured to make excuses. Reasons, okay, but excuses are lame. Just admit, “I didn’t do it, make it, remember it, whatever.”

My only reason for not sitting down to my computer would be a feeble excuse: I don’t like to have to stay indoors in the summer. Well that doesn’t fly: 1) I could take my laptop outdoors; 2) I could blog on my I-pad; 3) Even in the summer there is some indoor weather in Wisconsin; and 4) Summer of 2017 is long gone.

All such flim-flam aside, here I am: getting ready to celebrate the miraculous birth of our Lord with a wonderful big family. (There are momentarily 53 of us, and number 54 is due today to come out, to meet the tribe. She is our 19th great-grandchild, already named as of her 1st ultra-sound—“Margaret Rose” after her 2 paternal great-grandmas, of them being “moi”. How wonderful is THAT!)

And here is some art, “Autumn Garden at Night”. ⇑ The piece is gouache on a gallerywrap canvas, and it comes with poignant memories. Beginning last March, our precious Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Dylan, started to decline. He need to be taken out many times in a 24 hour period, so—like Robert Frost—I became very “acquainted with the night”.

March, April, and May nights were blustery, damp, and cold—but summer and early autumn were lovely. Dylan and I, attached at the hip since Joe and I brought him home from a farm in Iowa in early 2004, had countless precious nocturnal jaunts in our quiet courtyard lit by the patio light and the rosy solar lights in my gardens. Hence the above rendering.

Our Denver son, Karl, would like this painting and it will be his as soon as I find a way to get it to him, hopefully barring UPS or Priority Mail. But I am happy to have the picture in my computer, and on prints which I can share. Dylan died peacefully in my arms on October 16th. I think he had that famous corgi smile on his face right up to his last sigh.

Meanwhile, I worship a Living Savior and praise Him for LIFE—for people to love and “all creatures great and small”. May God bless you and your families with a beautiful holiday season—wherever, and whomever you are.

I doubt there is any middle ground with Yupo paper. One either loves it or hates it. The “haters” are those artists who demand control of their paints, and always work with an unflappable agenda in mind. These folks create beautiful works of abject realism, and often artists of palpable realism are highly trained and amazingly gifted—especially if they achieve high end realism in watercolors. Everyone knows that chasing watercolors is a bit like herding cats.

I am neither highly trained nor amazingly gifted, and fortunately the art I love the most does not fall in the category of abject realism. My favorite artists, the French Impressionists, Post Impressionists, Les Fauves, etc. who worked largely in oils were realistic to a degree, but always with an intensely personal voice. For anything other than “personal voice” I would use a camera—and for me, that wouldn’t be half as much fun as getting out the Yupo and letting the paints fly hither and thither.

Last week my good friend and fellow artist, Vikki, and I shared an art day at our dining room table. We began on Yupo. My rendering was, for starters, terribly generic and dreadfully similar to stacks of other paintings I’ve done: tree – space – tree – space; leaves and blossoms on tree – space – etc; and plomp – plomp – plomp – ad nauseum.

Now I detest—and desire to always eschew—the plagiarizing of any thing or any person, including myself. So that night I looked over this Yupo thingy, almost upchucked, sprayed it with my trusty water bottle, pressed plastic clingy food wrap onto the entire surface, and went to bed.

The next day I removed the cling film and VOILÀ! Something I could further develop and live with: the suggestion of a Viking ship* with sails, and lots of turbulence all over the place. So much better than plomp – plomp – plomp!

I added delineation and definition via gouache to the vessel and its surrounding sky and water—leaving a plethora of confusion, color, and turbulence in the sails as if the depicted journey was, like many of life’s journeys, fraught with distractions, dead-ends, and disasters.

However I am always a positive-note person, so then I named the piece: “Heading for Home the Last Time”—reflecting my blessed assurance in a glorious destination through it all, and eternal joy in the presence of my Lord Jesus.

Margaret L. Been, May 2017

*Because this painting is matted and framed to 12″ x 16″, it was too large to entirely fit in my scanner. Thus the ends of the ship do not completely show on the print. The original in its full size is more representative of an actual Viking ship. Since my husband is descended from Vikings, and loves ships, I wanted to be somewhat realistic. 🙂

As Joe and I, and our son Eric walked out of our Monday-night-$6.00-hamburger-restaurant, I scanned the crowded block searching for Eric’s car—and I finally gave up. Where was Eric’s car? The long chain of sedans looked all alike to me: black and white and shades of grey.

“Why are they doing this to us?” I asked Eric who, as a car person, is far more interested in engines than color? “That’s what the manufacturers think buyers want,” he replied. And it dawned on me that, in some ways, we live in a comparatively colorless era.

It wasn’t always like that. Born in the Great Depression, I nonetheless grew up surrounded by color—not only in my parents’ flower garden but in the clothes we wore. THE WIZARD OF OZ sported a “horse of a different color”. And Rhett Butler uttered his famous, blasphemous one-liner at the conclusion of a lengthy, super-colorful Hollywood spectacular.

Throughout the 1940s, color ruled*—both in fashion glitz and down home. The 50s produced the most wonderful lime green, aqua blue, and gold refrigerators—along with a vibrant palette of everything else. The 60s and 70s wore a lot of orange and gold, along with what I call “Hippie brown”—that mellow shade of soybean fields in late autumn. And from 1950 at least through the 1970s, the cars were drop dead gorgeous—streamlinedgorgeous, unlike many of the butt-ugly new boxes on the road today!

In the 90s all colors prevailed, with kind of a hokey emphasis on pink and blue in family restaurant décor along with geese or ducks parading on wallpaper borders. But yes, color. And in the 2000s, Joe and I lived in yet another colorful home in the ever-colorful Wisconsin north woods where even the 7 or 8 months of winter are brilliant with turquoise sky, lots of red dogwood branches, and bluish-purple shadows on snow.

So what is with these depressive car manufacturers? Do their stats show that buyers really wantblack and white and shades of grey? Or are the manufacturers simply watching too much news?

Even if the news were to blame, wouldn’t a large dose of stunning bright paint at least improve the quality of the moment for the driver and passengers in the car—not to mention those viewers surveying a parking area while trying to decide which car belongs to their son?

Meanwhile, throughout history art has come in every color imaginable—as well as in monotones and beautiful subdued tones. But I don’t think you’ll ever find me painting black and white and shades of grey. Oh, no!

*Color notwithstanding, in the 40s right up to now the long black velvet gown was and still is CLASSY!